Dan Hodges is a former Labour Party and GMB trade union official, and has managed numerous independent political campaigns. He writes about Labour with tribal loyalty and without reservation. You can read Dan's recent work here

There's only one way the police can regain respect after Plebgate: start telling the truth

The British police service needs to start telling the truth. Yesterday the Independent Police Complaints Authority – who have the statutory job of exposing police deception – ruled that a special panel should be convened to examine whether senior officers within the Police Federation gave a deliberately false account of a meeting with former chief whip Andrew Mitchell over the “Plebgate” affair. In the view of the IPCC, “the evidence indicates an issue of honesty and integrity, not merely naive or poor professional judgment”, on the part of the officers involved in the meeting.

The IPCC are right. From the very beginning of this sordid episode, disturbing questions hjave arisen about the honesty of serving police officers. It began with the incident at the gates of Downing Street itself. In the immediate aftermath, an officer in the Diplomatic Protection Group wrote a letter to the government deputy chief whip giving the clear impression that he had seen the confrontation, and corroborating accounts Mitchell had called the police stationed at the gates “f***king plebs”. In fact, he hadn’t seen the incident at all. He wasn’t even near Downing Street at the time.

A police log of the incident was published by this newspaper. It said “There were several members of public present as is the norm opposite the pedestrian gate and as we neared it, Mr MITCHELL said: "Best you learn your f—— place … you don’t run this f—— government … You’re f—— plebs." The members of public looked visibly shocked and I was somewhat taken aback by the language used and the view expressed by a senior government official”. But video footage taken at the time of the altercation shows no members of the public opposite the gate. And the one member of the public who was walking past at the time did not appear to register the incident at all.

The discrepancies continued with the Police Federation’s meeting with Andrew Mitchell in his constituency. In the meeting Mitchell was asked to give an account of what he had said at the gates of Downing Street. His response, which was taped and transcribed, was “The incident was very brief. I complied with the officer and I picked up my bicycle but I did say under my breath but audibly, in frustration, I thought you lot were supposed to f***ing help us and it is for that I apologise”.

After the meeting the representatives of the Police Federation addressed the media. The chairman of the West Mercia police federation, Ken Mackaill told Channel 4 News, “He [Andrew Mitchell] will not tell us what he did say”. His colleague, Stuart Hinton, of Warwickshire, claimed “He [Andrew Mitchell] still won’t say exactly what he did say”. That was despite the fact Andrew Mitchell had just told them precisely what he’d said to officers in Downing Street, and apologised for it.

Once the inaccuracy in the Police Federation’s officer’s account of the meeting became known, an investigation was initiated by West Mercia Police. Their report specifically acknowledges that “When interviewed during this investigation, all three officers stated that Mr Mitchell had been given the opportunity to tell them what he had said outside the gates of Downing Street but had chosen not to do so”. The transcript of the meeting categorically demonstrates these statements were untrue. Yet despite this, West Mercia announced “The investigating officer concluded that while the federation representatives’ comments to the media could be viewed as ambiguous or misleading, there was no deliberate intention to lie”. The IPCC's verdict on that finding is unambiguous “I do not consider that the officers could have been in any doubt about the impact of their public statements on the pressure being brought on Mr Mitchell. As police officers they had a responsibility to present a fair and accurate picture. Their motive seems plain: they were running a successful, high profile, anti-cuts campaign and the account that he provided to them did not fit with their agenda”.

It’s clear from what we’ve now learnt from the Andrew Mitchell case that the mindset that leads to these evidential "discrepancies" within the British police service is not confined to “a few rotten apples”. It is endemic. Indeed, it is clearly now an integral and established part of operational police procedure.

I’d go further. Misrepresenting evidence has now become so commonplace amongst British police officers they no longer recognise they are doing it. There is an incredible passage in the transcript of the meeting between the Police Federation and Andrew Mitchell in which the officers expound on the importance of honesty and integrity to them and their service. Stuart Hinton explains to Mitchell: “Honesty and integrity, as I have said a number of times over the last couple of days, is a central tenor to the police core value and if that wasn’t the case anything could happen … to have a senior government figure suggesting that an officer's account of events is inaccurate and possibly untruthful has wider implications, not just for that incident but for the police service in general”. Then, having delivered this powerful and moving soliloquy on the importance of police officers giving truthful accounts of their actions, Hinton and his colleagues got up, walked out, and gave a wholly distorted account of their meeting to the waiting press.

The bravery of our police cannot be questioned. Nor can their commitment. Indeed, it’s the zeal with which they seek to arrest and incarcerate those they feel are a menace to society that I suspect has gone a long way to embedding this culture of casual misrepresentation.

But things have got completely out of hand. For years the focus of those looking to clean up the police has centred on overt corruption and institutionalised prejudice. And to be fair, great strides have been made in both areas.

But presenting a one-sided account of the facts clearly comes with the badge. It is part of how the police do their business. The fact that a range of officers from differing parts of the service had no compunction about misrepresenting the actions of a senior member of the government demonstrates there are now no boundaries. Everyone and everything is fair game, so long as the police get the outcome they want.

Enough is enough. If the police genuinely want to retain the respect and confidence of those they are pledged to serve then they have to do one simply thing. They have to start telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. To us, and to themselves.